Firmly believing in the absolute excellence of the Deity, and regarding the Divine Goodness as the Final Cause of the universe, he pronounces the physical world to be animageof the perfection of God. Anaxagoras, no doubt, prepared the way for this theory. Every one who has read the "Phædo," will remember the remarkable passage in which Socrates gives utterance to the disappointment which he had experienced when expecting from physical science an explanation of the universe. "When I was young," he said--"it is not to be told how eager I was about physical inquiries, and curious to knowhow the universe came to be as it is; and when I heard that Anaxagoras was teaching that all was arranged bymind, I was delighted with the prospect of hearing such a doctrine unfolded; I thought to myself, if he teaches that mind made every thing to be as it is, he will explainhow it isBESTfor it to be, and show that so it is." But Anaxagoras, it appears, lost sight of this principle, and descended to the explanation of the universe by material causes. "Great was my hope," says Socrates, "and equally great my disappointment."645
Footnote 645:(return)"Phædo," §§ 105, 106.
Plato accepted this suggestion of Anaxagoras with all his peculiar earnestness, and devoted himself to its fuller development. It were a vain and profitless theory, which, whilst it assumed the existence of a Supreme Mind, did not represent that mind as operating in the universe bydesign, and as exhibiting his intelligence, and justice, and goodness, as well as his power, in every thing. If it be granted that there is a Supreme Mind, then, argued Plato, he must be regarded as "the measure of all things," and all things must have been framed according to a plan or "model" which that mind supplied. Intelligence must be regarded as having apurpose, and as working towards anend, for it is this alone which distinguishes reason from unreason, and mind from mere unintelligent force. The only proper model which could be presented to the SupremeIntelligence is "the eternal and unchangeable model"646which his own perfection supplies, "for he is the most excellent of causes."647Thus God is not simply the maker of the universe, but the model of the universe, because he designed that it should be an IMAGE, in the sphere of sense, of his own perfections--a revelation of his eternal beauty, and wisdom, and goodness, and truth. "God wasgood, and being good, he desired that the universe should, as far as possible,resemblehimself.... Desiring that all things should begood, and, as far as might be, nothing evil, he took the fluctuating mass of things visible, which had been in orderless confusion, and reduced it toorder, considering this to be thebetterstate. Now it was and is utterly impossible for the supremely good to form any thing except that which ismost excellent(κάλλιστον--most fair, most beautiful").648The object at which the supreme mind aimed being that which is "best," we must, in tracing his operations in the universe, always look for "the best" in every thing.649Starting out thus, upon the assumption that the goodness of God is the final cause of the universe, Plato evolved a system ofoptimism.
The physical system of Plato being thus intended to illustrate a principle of optimism, the following results may be expected:
1. That it will mainly concern itself withfinal causes. The universe being regarded chiefly, as indeed it is, an indication of the Divine Intelligence--every phenomenon will be contemplated in that light. Nature is the volume in which the Deity reveals his own perfections; it is therefore to be studied solely with this motive, that we may learn from thence the perfection of God. TheTimæusis a series of ingenious hypotheses designed to deepen and vivify our sense of the harmony, and symmetry, and beauty of the universe, and, as a consequence, of the wisdom, and excellence, and goodness, of its Author.650
Footnote 646:(return)"Timæus," ch. ix.
Footnote 647:(return)Ibid.
Footnote 648:(return)Ibid., ch. x.
Footnote 649:(return)Ibid., ch. xix.
Footnote 650:(return)"Being is related to Becoming (the Absolute to the Contingent) as Truth is to Belief; consequently we must not marvel should we find it impossible to arrive at any certain and conclusive results in our speculations upon the creation of the visible universe and its authors; it should be enough for us if the account we have to give be as probable as any other, remembering that we are but men, and therefore bound to acquiesce in merely probable results, without looking for a higher degree of certainty than the subject admits of"--"Timæus," ch. ix.
Whatever physical truths were within the author's reach, took their place in the general array: the vacancies were filled up with the best suppositions admitted by the limited science of the time.651And it is worthy of remark that, whilst proceeding by this "highà prioriroad," he made some startling guesses at the truth, and anticipated some of the discoveries of the modern inductive method, which proceeds simply by the observation, comparison, and generalization of facts. Of these prophetic anticipations we may instance that of the definite proportions of chemistry,652the geometrical forms of crystallography,653the doctrine of complementary colors,654and that grand principle that all the highest laws of nature assume the form of a precise quantitative statement.655
2. It may be expected that a system of physics raised on optimistic principles will bemathematicalrather than experimental. "Intended to embody conceptions of proportion and harmony, it will have recourse to that department of science which deals with the proportions in space and number. Such applications of mathematical truths, not being raised on ascertained facts, can only accidentally represent the real laws of the physical system; they will, however, vivify the student's apprehension of harmony in the same manner as a happy parable, though not founded in real history, will enliven his perceptions of moral truth."656
Footnote 651:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 157.
Footnote 652:(return)"Timæus," ch. xxxi.
Footnote 653:(return)Ibid., ch. xxvii.
Footnote 654:(return)Ibid., ch. xlii.
Footnote 655:(return)"It is Plato's merit to have discovered that the laws of the physical universe are resolvable into numerical relations, and therefore capable of being represented by mathematical formulæ."--Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 163.
Footnote 656:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 163.
3. Another peculiarity of such a system will be an impatience of every merelymechanicaltheory of the operations of nature.
"The psychology of Plato led him to recognize mind wherever there was motion, and hence not only to require a Deity as first mover of the universe, but also to conceive the propriety of separate and subordinate agents attached to each of its parts, as principles of motion, no less than intelligent directors. These agents were entitled 'gods' by an easy figure, discernible even in the sacred language,657and which served, besides, to accommodate philosophical hypotheses to the popular religion. Plato, however, carefully distinguished between the sole, Eternal Author of the Universe, on the one hand, and that 'soul,' vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the world, as well as the spheral intelligences, on the other. These 'subordinate deities,' though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, were still only the deputies of the Supreme Framer and Director of all."658The "gods" of the Platonic system are "subordinate divinities," "generated gods," brought into existence by the will and wisdom of the Eternal Father and Maker of the universe.659Even Jupiter, the governing divinity of the popular mythology, is a descendant from powers which are included in the creation.660The offices they fulfill, and the relations they sustain to the Supreme Being, correspond to those of the "angels" of Christian theology. They are the ministers of his providential government of the world.661
Footnote 657:(return)Psalm lxxxii. I; John x. 34.
Footnote 658:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 164.
Footnote 659:(return)"Timæus," ch. xv.
Footnote 660:(return)Ibid.
Footnote 661:(return)"Laws," bk. x.
The application of this fundamental conception of the Platonic system--the eternal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and Truth in an ultimate reality, the Eternal Mind--to the elucidation of thetemporal lifeof man, yields, as a result--
Believing firmly that there are unchangeable, necessary, and absolute principles, which are the perfections of the Eternal Mind, Plato must, of course, have been a believer in animmutable morality. He held that there is a rightness, a justice, anequity, not arbitrarily constituted by the Divine will or legislation, but founded in the nature of God, and therefore eternal. The independence of the principles of morality upon the mere will of the Supreme Governor is proclaimed in all his writings.662The Divine will is the fountain of efficiency, the Divine reason, the fountain of law. God is no more the creator ofvirtuethan he is the creator oftruth.
And inasmuch as man is a partaker of the Divine essence, and as the ideas which dwell in the human reason are "copies" of those which dwell in the Divine reason, man may rise to the apprehension and recognition of the immutable and eternal principles of righteousness, and "by communion with that which is Divine, and subject to the law of order, may become himself a subject of order, and divine, so far as it is possible for man."663
Footnote 662:(return)In "Euthyphron" especially.
Footnote 663:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xiii.
The attainment of this consummation is the grand purpose of the Platonic philosophy. Its ultimate object is "the purification of the soul," and its pervading spirit is the aspiration after perfection. The whole system of Plato has therefore an eminentlyethicalcharacter. It is a speculative philosophy directed to a practical purpose.
Philosophy is thelove of wisdom. Now wisdom (σοφία) is expressly declared by Plato to belong alone to the Supreme Divinity,664who alone can contemplate reality in a direct and immediate manner, and in whom, as Plato seems often to intimate, knowledge and being coincide. Philosophy is the aspiration of the soul after this wisdom, this perfect and immutable truth, and in its realization it is a union with the Perfect Wisdom through the medium of a divine affection, theloveof which Plato so often speaks. The eternal and unchangeable Essence which is the proper object of philosophy is also endowed withmoralattributes. He is not only "the Being," but "the Good" (τὸ ἀγαθόν), and all in the system of the universe which can be the object of rational contemplation, is an emanation from thatgoodness. The love of truth is therefore the love of God, and the love of Good is the love of truth. Philosophy and morality are thus coincident. Philosophy is the love of Perfect Wisdom; Perfect Wisdom and Perfect Goodness are identical; the Perfect Good is God; philosophy is the "Love of God."665Ethically viewed, it is this one motive oflovefor the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness, predominating over and purifying and assimilating every desire of the soul, and governing every movement of the man, raising man to a participation of and communion with Divinity, and restoring him to "thelikenessof God." "This flight," says Plato, "consists in resembling God (όµοίωσιϛ Θεῷ), and this resemblance is the becoming just and holy with wisdom."666"This assimilation to God is the enfranchisement of the divine element of the soul. To approach to God as the substance of truth isScience; as the substance of goodness in truth isWisdom, and as the substance of Beauty in goodness and truth isLove."667
The two great principles which can be clearly traced as pervading the ethical system of Plato are--
1.That no man is willingly evil.668
2.That every man is endued with the power of producing changes in his moral character669
Footnote 664:(return)"Phædrus," § 145.
Footnote 665:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 61.
Footnote 666:(return)"Theætetus," § 84.
Footnote 667:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 277.
Footnote 668:(return)"Timæsus," ch. xlviii.
Footnote 669:(return)"Laws," bk. v. ch. i., bk. ix. ch. vi., bk. x. ch. xii.
The first of these principles is the counterpart ethical expression of his theory ofimmutable Being. The second is the counterpart of his theory of phenomenal change, ormere Becoming.
The soul of man is framed after the pattern of the immutable ideas of thejust, and thetrue, and thegood, which dwell in the Eternal Mind--that is, it is made in the image of God. The soul in its ultimate essence is formed of "the immutable" and "the permanent." The presence of the ideas of the just, and the true, and the good in the reason of man, constitute him amoral nature; and it is impossible that he can cease to be a moral being, for these ideas, having a permanent and immutable being, can not be changed. All the passions and affections of the soul are merely phenomenal. They belong to the mortal, the transitory life of man; they are in endless flow and change, and they have no permanent reality. As phenomena, they must, however, have some ground; and Plato found that ground in the mysterious, instinctive longing for thegoodand thetruewhich dwells in the very essence of the soul. These are the realities after which it strives, even when pursuing pleasure, and honor, and wealth, and fame. All the restlessness of human life is prompted by a longing for thegood. But man does not clearly perceive what thegoodreally is. The rational element of the soul has become clouded by passion and ignorance, and suffered an eclipse of its powers. Still, man longs for the good, and bears witness, by his restlessness and disquietude, that he instinctively desires it, and that he can find no rest and no satisfaction in any thing apart from the knowledge and the participation of the Supreme, the Absolute Good.
This, then, is the meaning of the oft-repeated assertion of Plato "that no man is willingly evil;" viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment.670But still he insists that no man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it voluntarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every volition, by its essential nature, pursues, at least, anapparentgood; because the end of volition is not the immediate act, but the object for the sake of which the act is undertaken.671
Footnote 670:(return)"Laws," bk. ix. ch. vi.
Footnote 671:(return)"Gorgias," §§ 52, 53.
How is it, then, it may be asked, that men become evil? The answer of Plato is, that the soul has in it a principle of change, in the power of regulating the desires--in indulging them to excess, or moderating them according to the demandsof reason. The circumstances in which the soul is placed, as connected with the sensible world by means of the body, present an occasion for the exercise of that power, the end of this temporal connection being to establish a state of moral discipline and probation. The humors and distempers of the body likewise deprave, disorder, and discompose the soul.672"Pleasures and pains are unduly magnified; the democracy of the passions prevails; and the ascendency of reason is cast down." Bad forms of civil government corrupt social manners, evil education effects the ruin of the soul. Thus the soul is changed--is fallen from what it was when first it came from the Creator's hand. But the eternal Ideas are not utterly effaced, the image of God is not entirely lost. The soul may yet be restored by remedial measures. It may be purified by knowledge, by truth, by expiations, by sufferings, and by prayers. The utmost, however, that man can hope to do in this life is insufficient to fully restore the image of God, and death must complete the final emancipation of the rational element from the bondage of the flesh. Life is thus a discipline and a preparation for another state of being, and death the final entrance there.673
Footnote 672:(return)"Gorgias," §§ 74-76.
Footnote 673:(return)"Phædo," §§ 130, 131.
Independent of all other considerations, virtue is, therefore, to be pursued as the true good of the soul. Wisdom, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, the four cardinal virtues of the Platonic system, are to be cultivated as the means of securing the purification and perfection of the inner man. And the ordinary pleasures, "the lesser goods" of life, are only to be so far pursued as they are subservient to, and compatible with, the higher and holier duty of striving after "the resemblance to God."
Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony of Thrace, B.C. 384. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician in the Court of Amyntas II., King of Macedonia, and is reported to have written several works on Medicine and Natural History. From his father, Aristotle seems to have inherited a love for the natural sciences, which was fostered by the circumstances which surrounded him in early life, and which exerted a determining influence upon the studies of his riper years.
Impelled by an insatiate desire for knowledge, he, at seventeen years of age, repaired to Athens, the city of Plato and the university of the world. Plato was then absent in Sicily; on his return Aristotle entered his school, became an ardent student of philosophy, and remained until the death of Plato, B.C. 348. He therefore listened to the instructions of Plato for twenty years.
The mental characteristics of the pupil and the teacher were strikingly dissimilar. Plato was poetic, ideal, and in some degree mystical. Aristotle was prosaic, systematic, and practical. Plato was intuitive and synthetical. Aristotle was logical and analytical. It was therefore but natural that, to the mind of Aristotle, there should appear something confused, irregular, and incomplete in the discourses of his master. There was a strange commingling of questions concerning the grounds of morality, and statements concerning the nature of science; of inquiries concerning "real being," and speculations on the ordering of a model Republic, in the same discourse. Ethics,politics, ontology, and theology, are all comprised in his Dialectic, which is, in fact, the one grand "science of the idea of the good." Now to the mind of Aristotle it seemed better, and much more systematic, that these questions should be separated, and referred to particular heads; and, above all, that they should be thoroughly discussed in an exact and settled terminology. To arrange and classify all the objects of knowledge, to discuss them systematically and, as far as possible, exhaustively, was evidently the ambition, perhaps also the special function, of Aristotle. He would survey the entire field of human knowledge; he would study nature as well as humanity, matter as well as mind, language as well as thought; he would define the proper limits of each department of study, and present a regular statement of the facts and principles of each science. And, in fact, he was the first who really separated the different sciences and erected them into distinct systems, each resting upon its own proper principles. He distributed philosophy into three branches:--(i.)Theoretic; (ii.)Efficient; (iii.)Practical. The Theoretic he divided into--1.Physics;2. Mathematics; 3.Theology, or the Prime Philosophy--the science known in modern times as Metaphysics. The Efficient embraces what we now term the arts,--1.Logic; 2. Rhetoric; 3.Poetics. The Practical comprises--1. Ethics; 2.Politics. On all these subjects he wrote separate treatises. Thus, whilst Plato is the genius of abstraction, Aristotle is eminently the genius of classification.
Such being the mental characteristics of the two men--their type of mind so opposite--we are prepared to expect that, in pursuing his inquiries, Aristotle would develop a differentOrganonfrom that of Plato, and that the teachings of Aristotle will give a new direction to philosophic thought.
ARISTOTELIAN ORGANON.
Plato made use of psychological and logical analysis in order to draw from the depth of consciousness certain fundamental ideas which are inherent in the mind--born with it, and notderived from sense or experience. These ideas he designates "the intelligible species" (τὰ νοουµενα γένη) as opposed to "the visible species"--the objects of sense. Such ideas or principles being found, he uses them as "starting-points" from which he may pass beyond the sensible world and ascend to "the absolute," that is, to God.674Having thus, by immediate abstraction, attained to universal and necessary ideas, he descends to the outer world, and attempts by these ideas to construct an intellectual theory of the universe.675
Aristotle will reverse this process. He will commence withsensation, and proceed, by induction, from the known to the unknown.
The repetition of sensations producesrecollection, recollectionexperience, and experience producesscience.676"Science and art result unto men by means of experience...." "Art comes into being when, from a number of experiences, one universal opinion is evolved, which will embrace all similar cases. For example, if you know that a certain remedy has cured Callias of a certain disease, and that the same remedy has produced the same effect on Socrates and on several other persons, that isExperience; but to know that a certain remedy will cure all persons attacked with that disease, isArt. Experience is a knowledge of individual things (τῶν καθέκαστα); art is that of universals (τῶν καθόλου)."677
Footnote 674:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx.
Footnote 675:(return)"Timæus," ch. ix.
Footnote 676:(return)"Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. i.
Footnote 677:(return)Ibid.
Disregarding the Platonic notion of the unity of all Being in the absolute idea, he fixed his immediate attention on the manifoldness of the phenomenal, and by a classification of all the objects of experience he sought to attain to "general notions." Concentrating all his attention on the individual, the contingent, the particular, he ascends, by induction, from the particular to thegeneral; and then, by a strange paralogism, "theuniversal" is confounded with "thegeneral" or, by a species of logical sleight-of-hand, the general is transmuted into the universal. Thus "induction is the pathway fromparticulars to universals."678But how universal and necessary principles can be obtained by a generalization of limited experiences is not explained by Aristotle. The experiences of a lifetime, the experiences of the whole race, are finite and limited, and a generalization of these can only give the finite, the limited, and at most, the general, but not the universal.
Footnote 678:(return)"Topics," bk. i. ch. xii.; "Ethics," bk. vi. ch. iii.
Aristotle admits, however, that there are ideas or principles in the mind which can not be explained by experience, and we are therefore entitled to an answer to the question--how are these obtained? "Sensible experience gives us what ishere,there,now, in such and such a manner, but it is impossible for it to give what iseverywhereandat all times."680He tells us further, that "science is a conception of the mind engaged in universals, and in those things which exist of necessity, and since there areprinciples of things demonstrable and of every science(for science is joined with reason), it will be neither science, nor art, nor prudence, which discovers the principles of science;... it must therefore be (νοῦς) pure intellect," or the intuitive reason.681He also characterizes these principles asself-evident. "First truths are those which obtain belief, not through others, but through themselves, as there is no necessity to investigate the 'why' in scientific principles, but each principle ought to be credible by itself."682They are alsonecessaryandeternal. "Demonstrative science is from necessary principles, and those which areper seinherent, are necessarily so in things."683"We have all a conception of that which can not subsist otherwise than it does.... The object of science has a necessary existence, therefore it iseternal. For those things which exist in themselves, by necessity, are all eternal."684But whilst Aristotle admits that there are "immutable and first principles,"685which are not derived from sense and experience--"principles which are the foundation of all science and demonstration, but whichare themselves indemonstrable,"686because self-evident, necessary, and eternal; yet he furnishes no proper account of their genesis and development in the human mind, neither does he attempt their enumeration. At one time he makes the intellect itself their source, at another he derives them from sense, experience, and induction. This is the defect, if not the inconsistency, of his method.687
Footnote 680:(return)"Post. Analytic," bk. i. ch. xxxi.
Footnote 681:(return)"Ethics," bk. vi. ch. vi.
Footnote 682:(return)"Topics," bk. i. ch. i.
Footnote 683:(return)"Post. Analytic," bk. i. ch. vi.
Footnote 684:(return)"Ethics," bk. vi. ch. iii.
Footnote 685:(return)Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xi.
Footnote 686:(return)"Post. Analytic," bk. i. ch. iii.
Footnote 687:(return)Hamilton attempts the following mode of reconciling the contradictory positions of Aristotle:"On the supposition of the mind virtually containing, antecedent to all experience, certain universal principles of knowledge, in the form of certain necessities of thinking; still it is only by repeated and comparative experiments that we compass the certainty; on the one hand, that such and such cognitions can not but be thought as necessary, native generalities; and, on the other, that such and such cognitions may or may not be thought, and are, therefore, as contingent, factitious generalizations. To this process of experiment, analysis, and classification, through which we attain to a scientific knowledge of principles, it might be shown that Aristotle, not improperly, applies the termInduction."--"Philosophy," p. 88.
"On the supposition of the mind virtually containing, antecedent to all experience, certain universal principles of knowledge, in the form of certain necessities of thinking; still it is only by repeated and comparative experiments that we compass the certainty; on the one hand, that such and such cognitions can not but be thought as necessary, native generalities; and, on the other, that such and such cognitions may or may not be thought, and are, therefore, as contingent, factitious generalizations. To this process of experiment, analysis, and classification, through which we attain to a scientific knowledge of principles, it might be shown that Aristotle, not improperly, applies the termInduction."--"Philosophy," p. 88.
The human mind, he tells us, has two kinds of intelligence--thepassiveintelligence (νοῦς παθητικός), which is the receptacle of forms (δεκτικὸν τοῦ εὶδους); and theactiveintelligence (νοῦς ποιητικός), which impresses the seal of thought upon the data furnished by experience, and combines them into the unity of a single judgment, thus attaining "general notions."688The passive intelligence (the "external perception" of modern psychology) perceives the individual forms which appear in the external world, and the active intelligence (the intellect proper) classifies and generalizes according to fixed laws or principles inherent in itself; but of these fixed laws--πρῶτα νοήµατα--first thoughts, orà prioriideas, he offers no proper account; they are, at most, purely subjective. This, it would seem, was, in effect, a return to the doctrine of Protagoras and his school, "that man--the individual--is the measure of all things." The aspects under which objects present themselves in consciousness, constitute our only ground of knowledge; we have no direct, intuitive knowledge of Beingin se. The noetic facultyis simply aregulativefaculty; it furnishes the laws under which we compare and judge, but it does not supply any original elements of knowledge. Individual things are the only real entities,689and "universals" have no separate existence apart from individuals in which they inhere as attributes or properties. They are consequently pure mental conceptions, which are fixed and recalled by general names. He thus substitutes a species of conceptual-nominalism in place of the realism of Plato. It is true that "real being" (τὸ ὄν) is with Aristotle a subject of metaphysical inquiry, but the proper, if not the only subsistence, or οὐαία, is the form or abstract nature of things. "The essence or very nature of a thing is inherent in theformandenergy"690The science of Metaphysics is strictly conversant about these abstract intellectual forms just as Natural Philosophy is conversant about external objects, of which the senses give us information. Our knowledge of these intellectual forms is, however, founded upon "beliefs" rather than upon immediate intuition, and the objective certainty of science, upon the subjective necessity of believing, and not upon direct apperception.
Footnote 688:(return)"On the Soul," ch. vi.; "Ethics," bk. vi. ch. i.
Footnote 689:(return)"Metaphysics," bk. vi. ch. xiii.
Footnote 690:(return)Ibid., bk. vii. ch. iii.
The points of contrast between the two methods may now be presented in a few sentences. Plato held that all our cognitions are reducible to two elements--one derived fromsense, the other frompure reason; one element particular, contingent, and relative, the other universal, necessary, and absolute. By an act ofimmediate abstractionPlato will eliminate the particular, contingent, and relative phenomena, and disengage the universal, necessary, and absoluteideaswhich underlie and determine all phenomena. These ideas are the thoughts of the Divine Mind, according to which all particular and individual existences are generated, and, as divine thoughts, they are real and permanent existences. Thus by a process of immediate abstraction, he will rise from particular and contingent phenomena to universal and necessary principles, and from these to the First Principle of all principles, the First Cause of all causes--that is, toGod.